Nichols comes to defence of St John Paul II

Cardinal Vincent Nichols has commented on the controversy ignited by newly revealed letters from St John Paul II to the philosopher Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka, reaffirming that the late Pope was committed and faithful to God, write Jonathan Luxmoore and Megan Cornwell.

In a tweet sent just half an hour after a Panorama programme revealing the highly personal letters was broadcast on BBC One on Monday, the cardinal said: “We love Pope St John Paul II: faithful to God, faithful to his vows, faithful to his loving friends.”

The Panorama report quoted from letters written between 1973 and 2004. The correspondence gives a new insight into a deep friendship between two people who grew in mutual affection and respect while collaborating on a philosophy book when John Paul II was still Cardinal Wojtyla.

Poland’s Catholic bishops declined to comment on the programme but Polish media gave it extensive coverage. St John Paul II’s former secretary issued a rebuttal before the programme was shown. “Anyone who lived close to John Paul II knows well that there was no place in his life for any seeking out of the bad”, Cardinal Stanislaw Dziwisz said on his Krakow archdiocese website. “He was a free and transparent person, who had no complexes because he was chaste.”

The Catholic Gosc Niedzielny weekly said the BBC had made “false suggestions” and backed a statement by Poland’s National Library, insisting the correspondence between Tymieniecka and the Pope was “neither secret nor exceptional”.

Malgorzata Glabisz-Pniewska, a Catholic presenter with Polish Radio told The Tablet the BBC’s “beautiful, moving film” could “change for the better” the way many Poles viewed the saint.